shooting for the stars, desperately reaching for something in the dark
by blenderfullasarcasm
Summary: "...This is almost as weird as the time Hattori and I had to fight off zombies with a sword and a boom mic." / "I find myself more partial to baseball bats in terms of a zombie apocalypse, Tantei-kun." / (Spooktober Day 13: Zombie Apocalypse / baseball bat)


Conan sighed, sidling over to where a certain thief was leaning casually against the wall before flipping the switch on the white noise generator in his pocket. "You know, there _is _a reason I'm in hiding."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Conan-kun," the person dressed as the older version of him said. It was either Vermouth or Kid. Or possibly his mother, but Conan liked to think that she had more sense than that.

But, given that they were at one of KID's heists...

Conan leveled a flat look at him - as much as he could, given that he was a good meter shorter. "There's a reason I can't show the face you're currently wearing in public. And although I do appreciate your giving me an alibi on occasion, I can't in good conscience let you keep disguising yourself as me without knowing why."

Shinichi - rather, KID - chuckled lightly. "And you thought now was the best time?"

Conan snorted, sounding rather out of character for a seven-year-old. But that didn't really matter around KID, did it? "Give me some credit. You have a good twenty minutes before your heist and I've got a white noise generator in my pocket. No one comes near us when we're together, mostly because I think they're afraid of catching whatever makes me a murder magnet. I'm looking down, so unless there are cameras in the floor - and I looked, trust me - no one will be able to read my lips. Unless someone around here has a parabolic dish, our conversation is safe. And even then, anything they might hear would be garbled beyond recognition."

"Ah." KID looked enlightened. "That's what you were doing while you were crawling around on the floor earlier."

Conan shrugged unrepentantly, absently dusting some dirt from the hem of his shorts. "That, and looking out for some of your traps. As long as I have this body, I may as well get some mileage out of it."

KID huffed a soft laugh. "I suppose. What was it you wanted to tell me, then, Tantei-kun?"

Conan sighed. "I obviously can't stop you from disguising yourself as me. But if you're going to keep doing it, you should know why I _can't _be me, at least for right now. I mean, it's not like we have an antidote that actually works at this point…" He trailed off, contemplating his life choices for a moment. Then he shook his head slightly, gathering his thoughts.

"About a year ago, I was poisoned by two men wearing black coats, both with alcoholic code names. They left me for dead, because the poison was supposed to make me disintegrate without a trace. The idea, of course, being that if there's no body, there's no murder. Instead, I shrunk. Later, I found out that they were part of a larger organization. I've been calling them the Black Organization in my head," he said, deliberately not mentioning Haibara or any of the information she'd given him because although Conan trusted KID, Haibara did not, and she'd probably kill one or both of them if he said anything. "They're far-reaching and almost untraceable. If they find out I'm alive, they'll come after me. Or you, if you're disguised as me. Just so you know," he added awkwardly.

"Well." KID looked mildly perturbed. "I don't know what I suspected, but it certainly wasn't that. I was thinking more along the lines of getting on the wrong side of a witch."

"A what?!" Conan spluttered.

KID shrugged. "Am I to take this warning as a sign that you'd be amenable to working together again?"

"Why? Just because I've let you go before…" Conan had a feeling he knew where this was going, but he wasn't really sure how to feel about it.

KID shrugged again, even more nonchalantly than before, like this wasn't a big deal or anything. "You've noticed my rather more...enthusiastic fans, of course?"

"You mean the ones that shoot at you?" Conan said dryly. "I don't know that I'd call them fans, exactly."

KID waved a hand dismissively. "Assassins, fans - same thing, really."

Conan snorted in blatant disbelief.

KID continued: "I believe it's entirely possible that my more lethal fans and your friends in black might be in the same business. Really, how many secret criminal organizations can there be in Tokyo?"

Conan snorted again. "You'd be surprised," he muttered, but looked thoughtful. There were at least three groups that he could list off the top of his head, but - to the best of his knowledge - none of them had dress codes or code names for their members.

After a moment more of contemplation, the tension seeped from Conan's shoulders abruptly. "What the hell," he muttered. "I'm already using a false identity, I've forged legal documents, and I've aided and abetted _you _at least five times. May as well go all out."

This was probably a bad idea, Conan admitted to himself. But, then again, he'd never really had any impulse control when it came to cases.

KID clapped his hands together softly. "Excellent. You'll find the number for one of my burner phones in your contacts under 'Magnificent Magician' - for the alliteration, of course."

Conan resolved to change it to 'That Asshole' the next chance he had, not even bothering to wonder when KID had had the chance to pick his pocket. Trying to figure it out would just make Conan more confused, which wasn't exactly ideal if he needed to help KID escape the assholes shooting at him again.

"I'll contact you later," KID added. "Or you can text me or something. I'm not too picky. But for now…" he trailed off, and Conan rolled his eyes because _of course _KID needed a dramatic pause. "... _it's showtime _."

The room filled with pink smoke. Conan tried (and failed epically) not to roll his eyes _again _as he heard KID's voice next to him, counting softly: " _Three...Two...One!" _

Suddenly KID had the jewel in his hand, standing on top of the jewel case and cackling while the task force tried to tackle him.

Conan wondered absently whose bright idea it was to cover the floor in tripwires.

Now that he thought about it, he remembered vaguely someone in the task force suggesting it. It had probably been KID in disguise, actually.

Conan was mildly impressed - against his will, obviously, because KID was technically a criminal no matter their weird alliance thing - when every fifth wire triggered a ball of paint to fall from the ceiling to splatter the task force, no matter what order. Either KID knew the task force scarily well, or…

A flash of movement in his peripheral vision caught his eye. The curator, standing as far away from the mayhem as he could without looking too suspicious, had one hand in his pocket. Conan watched for one, two, three, four, five, and then - just as he suspected. The curator's arm twitched slightly as he presumably pressed a button on the remote in his pocket.

Conan smirked. Sure, he might have agreed to helping KID with their mutual pest problem, but that didn't mean that he had to make the heists _easy. _

The curator nearly jumped out of his skin - or, rather, his disguise - as something blurred past him and hit the wall behind him. He turned his head slowly, eyes wide, to see a soccer ball spinning in a dent in the wall too close to his head for comfort. He turned back in the direction of its origin to see a small boy grinning up at him.

"Sorry, jii-san! I was aiming for KID's accomplice!"

The accomplice paled under his mask. "O-oh. That's okay, boya. J-just hit him next time."

Conan's grin widened as he made a show of glancing around. KID's assistant followed his gaze nervously, but there wasn't anyone anywhere near them. He looked back at Conan, shivering visibly at the evil expression Conan could feel creeping onto his face.

Conan brought a hand up to hide his lips from the only nearby camera and stage whispered, "I don't think you'd want me to do that, jii-san."

KID's accomplice froze, blinking wildly as he tried to come up with a response.

Conan took the opportunity to pick his pocket, plucking the remote from his twitching fingers, because _of course _he'd started looking at stage magic once KID heists had become the only place he could go without someone being murdered.

He grinned. "Thanks, jii-san!"

And then he was scampering off somewhere, leaving the 'curator' standing there, stunned.

Conan's grin shifted into a smirk at the man's expression, because it was _hilarious _, then turned his attention to the remote. It was sleek and clearly custom-made, as befitting of KID, and far too complicated to be understood with a single brief glance.

Conan considered this, along with all the buttons that seemed to be blinking at random, then his gaze shifted to the task force - who were understandably suspicious when the traps abruptly stopped. They began cautiously moving forward, hitting the wires seven, eight, nine times, nothing happening -

...He shouldn't.

Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen -

He _really _shouldn't.

Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two -

Conan's finger hovered over one of the buttons, indecisive. On one hand, KID _was _technically a criminal and the task force was trying to capture him and bring him to justice. On the other hand...

Twenty-four.

...What the hell. He could make up an excuse later, if anyone even realized it had been him at fault and not KID.

_Twenty-five. _

As soon as an officer hit a wire for the twenty-fifth time without retribution, Conan pressed his palm to the remote and mashed all of the buttons at the same time, making a token effort to suppress his manic grin. He was curious about what would happen, so sue him.

He was currently seven, so he could get away with it, if anyone saw him.

...He could always say that he was trying to cut down on time and obstacles or something. That was a decent enough excuse, for a seven-year-old.

Conan snickered under his breath, taking a moment to survey the prank's aftermath before turning on his heel and sprinting out of the display room.

It didn't take him long after that to make his way to the roof - it was only ten floors away. Honestly, he probably could have just taken an elevator, but he was still, rather understandably, wary about them after that whole thing with the bombs. And the thing with the stabbing. And the shooting.

Conan tried to avoid elevators when he could, okay.

Also, KID had probably booby-trapped them anyway.

Assuming he hadn't just blown the fuses to prevent them from working, period.

...So, yes, Conan ran up ten flights of stairs, so fast that he bounced himself off the corners rather than slow down enough to turn at each landing. The stairs themselves were annoyingly high, so much so that he had to lift his knees the way he did when he was juggling a soccer ball, which cut down on his speed.

Conan reached the rooftop faster than he'd expected. He was panting heavily, thighs burning, and he was sure he was going to regret it tomorrow, but he was there in reasonably short time. He paused at the top of the stairs, just long enough to catch his breath and spin the dial on his shoes, before kicking the door open and striding through casually, like he hadn't just run up ten flights of stairs in less than five minutes.

"I really hope you have cameras down there, because that was _hilarious _," he said, before actually processing the scene in front of him.

There were three people on the rooftop, and for once not one of them was shooting at KID.

However, there _were _four glowing concentric circles inscribed with symbols that Conan didn't recognize hovering just above the roof. Which was odd, because he considered himself fairly well-versed in ancient symbols after his Norse mythology kick in middle school expanded into Greek and Mesopotamian and Aztec and so on.

And, like.

The seemingly magical circle things were weird, too, he supposed.

There was one big circle, with lines so complex that they made Conan's eyes cross when he actually tried to study them in detail. Then, concentric to the large circle, there were three smaller circles - also with the strange symbols, although they were fewer and less complex. They weren't spaced evenly; two were right in front of Conan, slightly off center, while the other was on the opposite side of the roof.

That meant that he was blocked from seeing the person standing opposite him, and in turn they could not see him, by KID's cape as it whipped around in the strangely localized winds that appeared to come from the circles. How strange.

"Tantei-kun, what a surprise," KID ground out quietly, through audibly gritted teeth. "Of course I have cameras - what do you take me for, an amateur? Run along back to Mouri-san and I'll even send you a copy."

Conan snorted. "Yeah, right. I still owe you one from the fake bioterrorist thing, don't I?" he commented as he sidled closer, keeping himself behind KID's cape.

KID didn't turn around, keeping his eyes on whoever was standing in the circle opposite him. His shoulders were tense under his suit jacket, and with every step forward Conan took, they seemed to get incrementally tighter - so much so that Conan was vaguely worried that his spine would snap. His voice was just as tense as he commanded, from between clenched teeth,"Tantei-kun. _Leave _."

Yeah, right,

Like hell he was going to do that when KID had literally _jumped out of a plane with a broken arm _to save him and everyone on board, had jumped out of a _blimp _to save Conan from plummeting to his death and then helped him _sneak back on _to stop the fake bioterrorists.

KID was a good person.

Obviously Conan wasn't going to leave him to face...whatever was happening here.

Two steps more brought him close enough to see what was in the slightly smaller circle next to KID - or, rather, who.

It was a teenager in a high school uniform - not Teitan's, since it was a gakuran and not a blazer, and not one that Conan recognized off the top of his head. The guy himself was pretty nondescript - the stereotypical student-council-president-type guy, complete with a bowl cut and glasses. The only thing out of place was the way he was lying in the circle, smiling vacantly, not bothering to move even though he wasn't tied down or anything, or even in a very comfortable position. And there was something weird about his eyes...

One step closer, and Conan figured it out. His pupils were somehow...heart-shaped? And also pink.

...And he could hear a woman chanting unintelligibly, coming from the direction of the other circle.

He put two and two together.

"Is this the witch you were talking about?" he asked KID, expecting a nod or something in return.

Instead, he got a panicked, hissed, _"Get out of here, Kudou!" _

Conan almost flinched at the sound of his real name. KID wouldn't use it so casually, unless…

There was something tense in the air, and KID's muscles were twitching like he wanted to be moving, but there seemed to be some sort of..._ pressure, _maybe, holding him in place.

As soon as Conan noticed, of course, the woman's chanting sped up and the circles started glowing brighter and brighter, the wind whipping around faster and faster until they were practically inside a hurricane.

Conan barely had time to make the split-second decision to shove the limp, heart-pupiled teenager's body before he was doing it and then the..._ spell _thing took hold of him and he couldn't move, the light from the circle practically blinding him. He squeezed his eyes shut and bit back a scream, half in response to the brightness, half in response to the growing pain in his chest, far too similar to the sensation caused by Apotoxin for comfort.

Just as the pain was about to reach its peak, both it and the glowing light disappeared abruptly, leaving Conan blinking the spots from his eyes and trying to get enough of his sight back that he could make out the woman standing across from him in the other circle.

She looked...vaguely familiar, oddly, but he couldn't figure out why.

His mind stalled, and the only thing he could come up with was something to do with Kamen Yaiba…?

"Damn you, magus of light!" she snarled, and then Conan blinked and she was gone. He staunchly ignored the figure _on a broom _silhouetted against the moon.

He'd never been called a 'magus of light' before, but the way she'd said it made him think that it wasn't a compliment.

"Wait, you're the guy from the clock tower?" came KID's voice, slightly higher-pitched than normal, from somewhere behind him.

Conan blinked. Wait. The clocktower? "_ You're _the guy from the clock tower?!"

"I - yes, I - how did you _not _know?! It was in the news for, like, a week afterwards!"

"You know, in hindsight, that makes a lot of sense..." Conan said thoughtfully, ignoring the second half of KID's incredulous spluttering because that was the week he'd been shrunk, and, rather understandably, he'd had more important things to worry about. He turned to face KID directly, planning on continuing, but ground to a halt at the sight before him.

Conan stared at KID for a long moment.

"...This is almost as weird as the time Hattori and I had to fight off zombies with a sword and a boom mic."

KID coughed, struggling to his feet, apparently able to move again as the light from the circles faded away. "I find myself more partial to baseball bats in terms of a zombie apocalypse, Tantei-kun." He surveyed his body clinically, possibly noting the fact that he was currently about a meter shorter than he was five minutes ago. He blinked slowly, processing that. "...I won't deny that this is strange, though."

"...You should probably - "

" - disguise myself? Exactly what I was thinking!"

There was a puff of smoke, smaller than Conan was expecting, and then there was a blond seven-year-old with a light dusting of freckles over his nose standing in front of him, adjusting what looked suspiciously like Conan's pair of extra glasses.

Conan coughed. "Actually, I was going to say that you should find some clothes that _fit _. And, you know, _aren't _the Kaitou KID costume."

KID looked down at his clothes, which most assuredly noticeably did not fit him. He was practically swimming in his shirt alone, much less his suit jacket and cape. His hat and monocle had been whisked away in the same puff of smoke that had somehow...dyed his hair? Conan was ninety percent sure that hair dye needed more than five seconds to set, but what did he know.

(A lot. He knew a lot. But this was _Kaitou KID _he was talking about, who regular broke the laws of physics.)

"Unfortunately, I don't make it a habit to keep child-sized clothing around," KID said dryly, plucking at his shirt.

Which was fair.

Besides, aside from that one time he disguised himself as Genta during the whole Kirin debacle (which had been premeditated), what would he even use them for? They'd just be taking up space.

Conan sighed deeply. "I have some extra clothes in my backpack," he said reluctantly. "You can use them if you can fit into them." KID, annoyingly, was taller than him, which meant that it was possible that Conan's clothing might be too small.

(Conan was sick of being _too small _.)

"Why, thank you, Tantei-kun!"

There was another puff of smoke, and suddenly Conan's backpack was significantly lighter.

He resigned himself to losing those clothes forever. Whatever. It wasn't like he was too attached to them. They were just something to change into in case KID's heist involved glue, honey, paint, shaving cream, or, worst of all, _pudding _(again).

Just as the smoke was about to dissipate, KID threw down another pellet and Conan's vision was yet again inhibited by pink smoke.

The clothes must not have fit, then.

There were some rather worrying sounds coming from KID's direction - and, wow, it felt pretty weird to be calling him KID when he was blond and _seven _\- including scissors snipping, the cap of something being unscrewed (glue, maybe? marker?) and even the buzzing of what was either an electric saw or a _sewing machine. _Honestly, Conan wouldn't put it past him to have a full-size sewing machine tucked away in his suit somewhere.

When the smoke cleared, the blond kid was wearing some baggy jean shorts and a green shirt with a clover on the front, a blue jacket draped over his shoulders.

Conan stepped closer, taking in the sight, and realized that the 'shorts' were actually originally full-length jeans, likely for KID's civilian identity, that had been cut to a reasonable length for a child. They were cinched in at the waist with Conan's spare belt, which was mostly covered by the hem of his shirt - which, now that Conan was looking at it closely, he could see where the bottom had been cut and then glued into some semblance of a hem, and then presumably taken in the back somehow so he looked less like he was swimming in it.

If he ever wore the shirt as an adult again, it would be as a crop top.

(Conan was never going to be able to get the image of KID in a clover-print crop top out of his head.)

...Wait.

Wait a second.

Was that...

It was.

KID's jacket was apparently reversible, and even though Conan was about ninety percent sure that it had a white inner lining, he was even more certain that it was the navy blue jacket he currently had draped over his shoulders.

..._ How. _

Also, where the hell had his glider gone?

Before Conan could follow that train of thought, however, the door to the rooftop burst open, and Nakamori-keibu appeared with what was probably about half the task force covered in various shades of eye-wateringly bright paint. _"KID," _he growled, before realizing that there was no one on the roof besides two small children, who obviously couldn't _possibly _be KID.

(Conan had no idea where the heart-pupiled guy had gone, but he was pretty sure that the 'witch' had possibly...teleported him? Or something. He was just...choosing not to think about the fact that _apparently _magic was real.)

(Yeah, so what if he was in denial? A lot had happened today.)

"Oh," Nakamori-keibu paused, giving the area a cursory glance, like he was expecting KID to hop out from behind the water heater or something. "Hello, Conan-kun. Who's your friend? And where's KID?"

Conan gave him his best, most childish grin. He saw KID tense from the corner of his eye, and felt kind of insulted. "Sorry, Nakamori-keibu! KID got away! He gave my friend the jewel, though!"

Speaking in exclamation marks was so tiresome.

Nakamori-keibu sighed heavily. "Damn. We were so close this time."

Conan kicked KID in the shin before he could protest.

"Anyway, what's your name, kid?"

Conan bit back hysterical laughter, darting a quick glance at KID and hoping against hope that he wasn't going to come up with some stupid pun like 'Doito Katsuki' again because Nakamori-keibu would be on the lookout for that.

KID smirked, an eerie mirror of Conan's own, but his eyes said _blue screen of death _. Conan could practically _see _his thought process.

"I'm...Kuro-oh..." he said, likely preventing himself from giving a known alias in the nick of time.

Then, of course, that triggered the thought of Conan's current alias, which resulted in, "Shin…" and caused Conan to kick him in the shin again.

KID glared back at him, then added, "...ji," just to spite him.

"I'm Kuroo Shinji," he said, grinning up at Nakamori-keibu with another one of Conan's expressions, and Conan resisted the urge to kick him in the shin _again _. "Sorry, I hit my head a little while ago and now everything's kinda fuzzy."

Which apparently hit just the right button for Nakamori-keibu (KID looked vaguely guilty, so it was probably some traumatic event involving his daughter or something that KID had heard in the course of his reconnaissance), because his eyes widened and he paled. "Hadou!" he barked, and one of the task force members who had fanned out onto the roof jumped. "Take the kids downstairs and get them to the medics!"

Hadou saluted, then ushered Conan and KID down to the ambulances that were always stationed nearby at KID heists, in case the crowds got out of control. He left them in the care of the medics pretty quickly, apparently eager to get back to doing his _actual _job instead of baby-sitting, and, honestly, Conan couldn't blame him. He knew how _that _felt.

The medic gave KID a quick once-over, stuck a band-aid on Conan's knee where he'd apparently scraped himself at some point, then pronounced them good to go.

So they went.

Once they were a couple blocks away, Conan shot KID an unamused glance. "Kurou Shinji?" he muttered.

KID flushed. Like, actually flushed. His mask broke, and Conan was. Confused. Maybe. "You're one to talk, 'Edogawa Conan-kun'. Be thankful I didn't name myself Akefia Lupin or something."

"Akefia?" Conan asked, mildly curious, but also shoving all his observations into a little box in the back of his mind to deal with _later. _

(Maybe KID's poker face just hadn't been as good when he'd been younger?)

KID's eyes lit up. "Yeah, you know? The famous thief in Ancient Egypt? Fascinating story, really - "

"I would've thought you'd go for 'Kaitou' as a first name," Conan broke in, smirking.

KID shivered, for some reason. He couldn't be cold, not with the KID jacket still draped over his shoulders. "That's a bit too on-the-nose, even for me, Tantei-kun."

Conan rolled his eyes, then changed the subject. "So, that was your 'witch,' right?"

KID nodded cautiously.

"...What was she trying to do?"

KID winced. "...Make me fall in love with her."

Conan almost laughed, but KID looked...serious. What the hell. "...How was the weird circle thing going to do that? And why did it make you shrink instead?"

KID shrugged. "I wasn't really listening to her monologuing, but, given that the guy in the other circle had been put under a love spell, I'm going to hazard a guess and say that it was some kind of status effect sharing spell. I'm sure she was hoping the love spell would latch onto me, but since it was you in the circle instead of the other guy…" He trailed off, frowning contemplatively.

Conan tried to wrap his head around that, failed, then shoved it into the back of his mind to process later. "...I'm going to assume that you don't have a place to stay? You know, where you can actually reach the counters without help?"

KID was suspiciously silent.

Conan sighed deeply, then pulled out his phone number and hit his second speed-dial. The other side was picked up almost immediately. "Conan-kun?"

"Hey, Hakase, think you have room to put up another teenager-turned-preschooler?"

This was his life now, apparently. At least this time there weren't any zombies.

"Sure, Shinichi-kun - wait. Who is it? Ran-kun?" Agasa-hakase asked, worry dripping from his words.

Conan eyed the newly-miniaturized Kaitou KID and considered telling the professor for a whole five seconds. But, then again...

"...If I tell you you won't have plausible deniability."

.

.

.

.

.

Notes:

title from Guts (All Time Low)

so yeah i know im missing a few days but ive been busy this week. they're, like. half-written? and they seem to be gearing up to be longer fics too, so. we will see.

also. literally no proof-reading. _please_ let me know if something sounds weird.

(im sorry i promise my other detective conan fics are better ;;;)


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